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Thursday, October 24, 2013

MCDONALD’S COMPANY HELP LINE TO BROKE WORKER: ‘GO ON FOOD STAMPS’

Published time: October 24, 2013

McDonald’s workers who are unable to pay their bills
or stay above the poverty line should find help from food pantries or
enlist in government benefit programs instead of seeking higher wages,
according to a company resource line meant to help employees.
Nancy Salgado has worked for the fast-food corporation for over
10 years yet still earns $8.25 an hour, barely more than the
$7.25 federal minimum wage. With help from the worker’s rights
group Low Pay Is Not Ok, she phoned the company’s employee
hotline, known as McResource, attempting to find some answers on
how to improve her situation.
A recording of the call was made available to CNN, which reported
that Salgado asked the helpline operator multiple questions
regarding how McDonalds would help her pay her heating bill, buy
groceries, and whether she could afford to help pay for her
sister’s medical treatment.
Despite never asking how much money Salgado earned per hour or
asking how many hours a week she worked, the McDonalds
representative said she “definitely should be able to qualify for
both food stamps and heating assistance.”
The representative then said she would email Salgado phone
numbers and contact information for food pantries and other
public health programs in Chicago, Illinois, where Salgado was
calling from.
“We can be a good program,” the operator said. “We can
do a lot of the leg work that takes a lot of the stresses off of
you making a million phone calls trying to find services.”
Perhaps even more shocking is that not all McDonald’s employees
are guaranteed access to the would-be help line. Franchise owners
must pay a fee for their employees to use McResource and
Salgado’s restaurant, for example, is among the many Chicago
stores not afforded that privilege.
Salgado, 26-year-old single mother who has said she is rarely
allowed to work more than 30 hours a week, is the same woman who
was arrested earlier this month. She interrupted McDonald’s
Corporation President Jeff Stratton when he was speaking at the
Union League Club of Chicago on October 11.
“Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25
[per hour] when I’ve worked for McDonald’s for years?” she
shouted. “The thing is that I need a raise. But you’re not
helping your employees. How is this possible?”
She said at the time that she expected McDonald’s to retaliate in
some way but was apparently not swayed from calling McResource.
Salgado told the representative she was recording the call so her
sister could listen later.
“This video is not an accurate portrayal of the resource line
as this is very obviously an edited video,” McDonald’s said
in a statement. “The fact is that the McResource line is
intended to be a free, confidential service to help employees and
their families get answers to a variety of questions or provide
resources on a variety of topics including housing, child care,
transportation, grief, elder care, education and more.”
The publication of the call’s audio comes just days after a new
report indicated that over half of fast-food works in the US rely
on public assistance to supplement their paychecks, costing
American taxpayers an estimated $7 billion every year.
The average American fast food worker earns $8.69 an hour and
regularly works less than 40 hours a week, qualifying them for a
variety of government benefits. Fifty-two percent of families
that include a fast food worker receive food stamps, Medicaid, or
are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit and Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families. Compare that sum with the 25 percent of
families eligible for those assistance programs from the overall
workforce.
Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign determined that
“non-managerial” employees – such as cashiers, cooks,
servers, and others – are twice as likely to need financial help.
They deemed it “staggering” how government assistance programs
effectively pay costs that major food chains refuse to.

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